Leggett Served With Distinction

Ida Leggett would be thrilled to visit Idaho in the future and “not hear the whole black woman on the bench thing.” But that’s impossible.

In 1992, Leggett, a former Coeur d’Alene attorney and Gonzaga University law student, became Idaho’s first black female judge when former governor Cecil Andrus appointed her to fill a 2nd District Court vacancy in Lewiston. Now, as she prepares to leave the bench and move near her family in the Seattle area, she’ll be remembered for that.

However, she is more than a trailblazer. She’s a role model. A single mother of three who graduated cum laude from law school and then served as clerk for a Washington Supreme Court chief justice. A black attorney who overcame fear to practice law in monocultural North Idaho. An articulate voice against discrimination. A tough but empathetic judge who treated defendants in her Lewiston court respectfully.

Judge Leggett smashed a mold that needed to be broken. In 1992, she nearly became Idaho’s first black Supreme Court justice, a position that would have suited her temperament better than the tough District Court grind. Job-related stress and isolation prompted her to leave the court. It’s no fun to sentence people to life in prison.

Leggett was a finalist when Andrus appointed 2nd District Judge Linda Copple Trout to fill the Supreme Court vacancy. A few months later, he chose Leggett to fill Trout’s former post. At the time, Andrus said, “Anybody who appears before Judge Leggett can’t make the accusation, ‘You don’t know how tough it is out there in the world.’ She knows exactly how tough it is.”

Leggett grew up in an Alabama sawmill town where segregation affected almost every part of her life. She attended a school for black children and knew which places in town she and her family couldn’t go. In 1985, she opened a Coeur d’Alene practice. She knew she’d left the world of three-piece suits behind the minute she fielded her first business call. A man had shot two cows that had wandered onto his property and wanted to know if he could keep the meat. She also found a reminder her of her childhood: racism.

Publicly, on occasion, she wished for the day she could drive through Lake City in the summer with her car windows rolled down without hearing the word “nigger.”

Judge Leggett’s sojourn in Idaho has brought that day closer.